Cleartrip — Cancellation refund issue

Address:

MUMBAI

I had a flight from London - Mumbai on 8th Sep 2022. Due to unavoidable circumstances, I had to extend my stay at London and hence postpone my travel to Mumbai.

Thankfully, I had paid extra charges at the time of booking and opted for the flexible flight ticket option.

So on 6th Sep 2022, I first called the airline- Saudia Airways to enquire about the charges for re-scheduling / cancellation charges. They informed me that re-scheduling will cost me 83 GBP (~INR 8K) and for enquiry on cancellation, I should contact my travel agency.

Accordingly, I immediately called Cleartrip- 49 hours before my departure (just before the 48 hr cancellation window starts), to enquire about the cost implications of cancellation. After much deliberation, the customer service agent -Laxman, informed me that he is not able to see the exact refund value on his system, since it was a round trip and charges for one leg of the journey are not visible. However, once I cancel, I will get the refund to the extent of return journey charges computed by the airline, after deducting ~INR 5K charges. Since my round trip ticket cost was ~INR 80K, I assumed that one way might be ~INR 30-40K and after deducting ~INR 5K, I would get ~INR 25-35K as refund. To be sure of this understanding, I discussed the scenario with Laxman and he confirmed that the understanding is correct. While there was no commitment on the amount of refund, there will definitely be a fair value refund based on the above calculation. Since we were fast approaching the 48hr window, he advised me to decide soon, else I would miss the chance of cancellation. My return date was still TBD and 5K cancellation charges were acceptable to me- hence I gave a go-ahead to cancel the ticket instead of re-schedule it.

Within an hour, I got an email from cleartrip stating that my ticket has been cancelled and refund amount is INR 0. This was completely unexpected as there was absolutely no mention of a possibility of INR 0 refund from the agent I spoke with. Further, there was no opportunity to re-schedule the ticket now, since it had already been cancelled.

I called the cleartrip customer service that night again and spoke to Amit. After I raised my concern, Amit told me that the back end team will need to check and call me in 24hrs.

I got no call back. So I called the cleartrip customer service on 8th Sep again and spoke to Sagar. I raised my concern and he said that since this was a round trip and one leg of the journey was already travelled, I have received INR 0 refund. I told him that this was not mentioned at the time of cancelling the flight by Laxman. So this, he said that the investigation team will check the call recording and if there was any mention by refund by Laxman, they will compensate me for the same. Sagar said I will get a call in 24hrs.

I got no call back. So I called the cleartrip customer service on 10thSep again and escalated the matter to Akash. He mentioned that they have gone through the recording and there was no refund commitment from Laxman and hence it is acceptable to give INR 0 as refund. Further, the reason for no refund was that the cancellation happened within 48hrs, whereas it actually had happened in 49hrs.

I argued on the following points, but there was no help received:

1. Different executives are quoting different reasons of INR 0 refund- one is saying it was within 48hr window, other is saying it was because of round trip - there is major inconsistency here.

2. The non-commitment was towards the value of refund and not the prospect of getting refund itself. Laxman had clearly told me that there will a calculation of return fare minus INR 5K, which I can expect as refund. There was absolutely no mention of the chance of INR 0 refund.

3. In case Laxman would have highlighted even a 1% risk of INR 0 refund, I could have taken a very viable alternative of re-scheduling my ticket instead of cancelling it. That would have been a better economic outcome for me.

4. Since the wrong / incomplete information was shared on cleartrip's end, which led me to make an incorrect decision, they should compensate me for the loss made.

Would be very helpful if you could intervene and support here.